394 



THE WRECK. 



A SKETCH FROM AUSTRALIAN BUSH-LIFE IN 1853. 



THE traveller who has made an Australian voyage in a crowded 

 passenger-ship will well remember the feelings of joy which he 

 experienced when the bluff headlands of South Australia first burst 

 upon the view a rugged, iron-bound coast, whose rocky mountains 

 rise perpendicularly from the sea, and against whose bases the rude 

 waves of the Pacific have lashed in wild fury for ages 5 the sum- 

 mits clad with huge forests of iron and stringy bark, whose soli- 

 tudes, but a few years since, were unbroken save by the loud, shrill 

 coo-ee of the native, or the dismal howl of the dingo. A couple 

 of days' coasting, and the Heads are in sight, and, passing through 

 a narrow and dangerous inlet, little more than one English mile in 

 breadth, the good ship rides safely in Port Philip Bay, one of the 

 most beautiful in the world. This magnificent land-locked bay, 

 which more resembles a large inland lake than anything else, is 

 about forty miles in length, and perhaps twenty across 5 and, as the 

 emigrant gazes for the first time upon the landscape of singular and 

 novel beauty by which he is on all sides surrounded, the vicissitudes 

 and hardships of the past voyage are forgotten, and any regrets 

 which he may have felt on leaving the land of his birth, perhaps 

 for ever, fade away as he contemplates the smiling aspect which 

 the new country of his adoption wears upon its first introduction. 



As the ship proceeds further up the bay, the country gradually 

 opens upon the view, and, till Geelong is reached, nothing is seen 

 but low beaches, faced towards the sea with stunted honeysuckles 



